Dom Bede at Worth

Subscribe to this blog

Follow by Email

Search This Blog

Posts

“TWO BODIES”A SERMON PREACHED AT
A MEMORIAL MASS-21.03.18We’re all aware of the how the astonishing rush of discoveries and
applications in the field of technology is affecting every part of our lives:
smart phones, the web, robotics and driverless cars etc. But I wonder if you
would agree with me that it has impacted even on our subconsciouslives too, and in a way that makes belief in
the non-physical, non-observable, more challenging. And because it is a matter
of the subconscious,we may be largely unaware
of what is happening tous. So today, as we think and pray about Margaret’s life and death, the
question arises, “What does the Apostles’ Creed mean when it asks us to
believe in the “resurrection of the body
?”Is this really credible ?After all it does sound like the fanciful
reflections of a primitive people seeking to explain the meaning of their
lives. Well, there are two things (among various others) significant for me
personally, which I’d like to share with you. ·First, the M…

22nd March
2018 Dear
Bloggers, No, I didn’t drop dead ! But you haven’t had anything from me
for a few months, because I have been unwell. However, I’m now back on an even keel and about to
resume my postings which I do hope you will find interesting. Don’t hesitate to
respond if you should wish to make a comment !

THE BBC AND THE COMMON GOOD The BBC’s publication
of salaries paid to television and radio performers is an admirable step
towards greater transparency, and predictably has produced and will continue to
produce much discussion. Surely the injustice of the pay differential between
the sexes will at last be dealt with. Then there is the
obvious question about the scale of
remuneration for people who have become celebrities through their work at the
BBC. What does it feel like to wake up in the morning aware that your £1 or £2m
package is being paid for by the man in the street through his taxes and the licence
fee ? On the other hand if these levels are not paid, will the BBC lose these
talented folk ? And would that outcome
be desirable or not ? It is not my wish to
pronounce publicly on these questions, though I have my opinions like everyone
else. But I am interested here in how
a Christian mind approaches them. I want to be among the
first to salute the BBC for its immense achieve…

“. . . No one knows the Son except the Father, just as no one knows the
Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. . . . “ (Mtt 11, 27-28). So the only
means of having contact with God our Father is through Jesus Christ his
Son: and that is why Jesus calls us to follow him, to be his Disciples.
In the 1930s the German Lutheran Pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer
experienced anguish about the survival of Discipleship in his Church. The Nazi’s
strategy to emasculate the Church worried him and he foresaw the direction in
which Hitler was taking the German people. His anxiety was intensified by some of his
fellow Pastors such as Pastor Gruner,
who declared: “Hitler is the way of the
Spirit and the will of God for the German people”. Bonhoeffer reacted
robustly:
“We Lutherans have gathered like eagles round
the carcass of cheap grace, and there we havedrunk of the poison which has killed the
life of following Christ”.
By “che…

LOVE IS STRONGER THAN EVIL IN MANCHESTER !
How heartening to read in the
newspaper today that Ariana Grande has been made an honorary citizen of
Manchester.
“Love is stronger than evil,” was the theme of
the second Ariana Grande concert in Manchester which I watched on my computer
screen. To be honest I felt the music belonged to a generation other than mine,
and anyway I could not understand the sung words.
But what a thrill to hear every
performer, Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, standing before the throng, and proclaiming, “LOVE OVERCOMES EVIL,
YES ? ”, and then readily receiving the vociferous agreement of that huge
gathering of youth. It really was a magnificent ‘liturgy’, if the clerical
purists will permit me to use the term in this context !
“Liturgy” means “the work of the
people of God”, and whatever the allegiances of that mass of people, surely
they were the People of God in that
very moment of proclaiming what is in the hearts of all “Believers
of the Book”,…

A
HOMILY PREACHED IN WORTH ABBEY CHURCH 25th JUNE 2017 “Do not be afraid”, says Jesus to his
disciples in Mathew’s Gospel Ch 10,26. You know, I really don’t think he meant
them to try to eliminate or ignore the fear that would come into their lives.
You can’t just wave it away, you can’t do that; and after all, Jeremiah lived
with it: some of his enemies threw him into an abandoned well hoping that he
would starve to death in the mud. Fortunately others came and rescued him. And
Jesus in Gethsemane lived with it as he fulfilled his Father’s will for our
salvation. No, the context of this teaching seems to say that we must not allow
our fears or apprehensions to dictate to us. Three
years ago on 23rd May Archbishop Romero of El Salvador was beatified.
His story is human and moving. He had been made a rural bishop, later being
promoted to Archbishop in the metropolis at a time when conservative elements
in Rome were making episcopal appointments; he was regarded as a ‘safe
conservative’. …

100 YEARS OF FATIMA: A homily in Worth Abbey church 13.5.17 This year the Church
is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the appearances of Our Lady
at Fatima to the Portuguese peasant children, Lúcia Santos and Jacinta and
Francisco Marto, her little cousins. These events, occurring in 1917, were much
more than devotional events narrowly conceived:
they carried messages of great
import for us, the Church on earth. Many, out of genuinely
innocent ignorance have misinterpreted Fatima. Some say ·Our
Lady wants us to pray the rosary daily, full stop. ·Some
have read into it a call to ecclesiastical and theological conservatism, a return to pre-Vatican II days
of an individualist devotional spirituality. ·Others
have found in it a political message such as, ‘down with Communism’ (as in the
former Soviet Union) and ‘up with right wing regimes’, (as in Spanish Francoism
of the 1930s). All these are, at
best, distortions or half-truths, because Fatima is an integral message about the Christi…